Supervisor Bott threatens lawsuit to continue coverup

Content of this blog post derived from this Times Union Editor's note on Oct 31st 2025:

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To repeat Casey’s First Law of Public Relations: When you know it’s going to be a bad-news

story, don’t make it worse by creating a transparency beef.

Now, I’m not in public relations, so feel free to discount that guidance. But it’s proven to be

sound advice over the course of my 35 years in journalism — including on Friday morning,

when I read the initial version of Tyler A. McNeil’s article on a curious letter that the town of

North Greenbush had received from its outside auditing firm in late May.

The letter, addressed to the supervisor and the town board, identified fiscal peril related to the

town’s fund balance and 11 other internal control deficiencies, some of them deemed significant

and others minor. The letter had not been provided to the lone Democrat on the town board,

Mary Frances Sabo, who reached out to the Times Union in recent weeks after she became

aware of its existence and was tardily provided a copy.

On Friday morning, I asked Tyler to add a paragraph or two on the subsidiary issues raised by

the letter and suggested that we add a digital copy of the letter to the web version of the story so

readers — especially those in North Greenbush — could get a full picture of the auditors’

concerns to go along with the town officials’ response. Those officials had defended their

bookkeeping and expressed to Tyler their desire that the letter not be published. I told ourhard-working Rensselaer County correspondent he could let them know the decision had been

mine and to give them my phone number. I uploaded the letter to DocumentCloud and added it

to the story.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, I received a call from Town Supervisor Joe Bott, who, upon

learning the letter had been published, said someone was going to get sued.

When I asked who that might be, he identified Sabo as the likely defendant, with a potential

cause of action being the release of a confidential internal document. I said I’d quote him, and

then asked if he thought that document — the findings of a taxpayer-funded audit examining the

town’s finances — would have to be disclosed if a reporter or a member of the public filed a

state Freedom of Information Law request for it. He said he had asked the town attorney for his

thoughts on that; it’s definitely something to take into account before suing someone.

Then I asked Bott to explain why he thought the people of North Greenbush shouldn’t be able to

read the auditors’ concerns about the town’s finances. He fumed that it was an internal

document, a “housecleaning letter”

— which didn’t exactly answer my question, so I repeated it.

“I don’t care if they read it,” Bott said in a tone that left me unconvinced he didn’t care.

Anyone can sue anyone in this great land of ours, or almost. But here’s one thing I can say for

sure: If Bott decides to sue Sabo for releasing a document that raises issues of clear public

concern — especially when that document was not provided to her for months due to reasons

that remain murky — it will be litigation that the Times Union will report on assiduously.

As we have done in similar cases where the public’s right to know is at issue, we will pay close

attention to the disclosure of discovery evidence and depositions that might appear in the court

record long before the matter ever gets to trial. Such proceedings often have a way of opening

up the operations of public bodies in an illuminating fashion.

We’ll do that for the same reason we published the letter — because we believe the public

deserves to know such things, even if some elected officials hold a different view.